Pankaj Mishra: The Romantics

We finally arrived at the hotel, after lurching and splashing through an unknown maze of potholed dark back alleys. There was no power in the area, and the big white concrete block of the hotel stood brooding dumbly over its waterlogged forecourt. Inside, all was chaos: the weak light from petromax lanterns fell on rolled-up carpets and hectic men with pails and mops. The receptionist said that I would have to wait in the lobby: the roof had leaked and some of the rooms had been flooded. He went on to describe the rest of the evening’s disasters. I only half listened. Water ran down my back; my socks were wet; my feet cold. But I was feeling quite calm.

My foremost debt is to Barbara Epstein. It would be hard to imagine this book without her support. Jason Epstein’s early confidence in The Romantics was as crucial as his later suggestions. Mary Mount at Picador was a brilliant, ever-helpful editor and I was fortunate in having such a conscientious publisher in Peter Straus. Sanjeev Saith at IndiaInk offered a very sensitive reading of the book. Hilton Als, John H. Bowles, Ulf Buchholz, Robyn Davidson, Helen Epstein, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Vandana Mehrotra, Judith Miller, Nicholas Pearson and Tarun Tejpal offered valuable suggestions. I am grateful to Gillon Aitken for his encouragement through all the past few years. It has been a pleasure to work with Emma Parry and Sally Riley. I am also indebted to people who encouraged and assisted me in different ways: Robyn, Julie, William and Olivia, Norma, John, Patrick, Stuart, Chris and Sarah, Christina, the Sharmas at Mashobra, Paul, Pradip, Arundhati, Alok, Lucy, and my parents and sisters.

‘The atmosphere of The Romantics , from the opening page, is extraordinarily seductive. . a fine and impressive first novel’

Jason Cowley, Literary Review

‘Mishra’s writing has a lovely potency. . subtly layered and compelling first novel’

Shirley Chew, Times Literary Supplement

‘An intriguing combination of casual grace and emotional intensity, peppered with discreet social comment on caste, class, sectarian strife, the state of the nation. . this is a charming debut’

Aamer Hussein, Independent

‘A truly ambitious attempt to compare the way people in the East and the West dream — and the way they put their dreams behind them when the dreams come crashing down to earth. . Delicate and subtly tantalising in the way only a book can really be’

Vogue

‘Mishra offers a surprisingly assured, provocatively balanced meditation on the familiar culture clash, focusing on a generation of Indian youth bewildered about the value of an ancient heritage others find indispensable’

Boston Globe

‘Contemporary India is brought to vigorous, thrumming life in the pages of The Romantics’

Sunday Times

‘Mishra’s eye is sharp, his prose flawless’

Time

‘A first novel whose achievement is something that most writers could be proud of at any stage in their careers’

Vancouver Sun

‘Mishra’s lyrical descriptions of the Himalayas, Pondicherry, Allahabad and Dharamshala, and the depth of culture the region offers, is a haunting reminder of India’s power to bewitch’

Time Out

‘An extraordinary debut novel, The Romantics is a supernova in the wan firmament of recent fiction’

Washington Post

‘It is almost as if when everyone is flashing De Beers diamonds, Mishra traps the quiet luminescence of the moonstone in his theme and style’

The Hindu

‘A beautiful and moving book. Mishra deals quietly with big themes — love, loss, grief, the meeting of East and West, caste, the changes in modern India — with a delicacy and subtlety that would be impressive in an established writer’

New Straits Times (Malaysia)

‘Impressive. . The Romantics turns its back on the exotic richness and the “teeming” panoramic quality which we readily assume to be expressive of Indianness itself ’

Sydney Morning Herald

‘Mishra has managed to write a novel that showcases his own distinctive voice, a voice that fuses the lapidary precision of Flaubert with the meditative lyricism of Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited . . a resonant and highly subtle novel’

Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

PANKAJ MISHRA was born in 1969. He is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books , the New Statesman , the Times Literary Supplement and Outlook magazine. He divides his time between New Delhi and Shimla. The Romantics is his first novel.